The Mystery of Cain’s Wife

Have you ever wondered where Cain’s wife came from?  Have you, like me, sat thru church services listening to different explanations for her existence but you never quite agreed?  I have given over a month’s time in thought to this.  After studying the Bible passages over and over, I finally think I have come to a conclusion that makes more sense to me than what I have heard before.

Chapter 4 of Genesis states that “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. ….Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.”  I believe there is one word here that is the most important word to understanding this mystery.  The word LATER…… ‘LATER she gave birth to his brother Abel.’

We have all been taught to believe that there was ONLY Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel.  But the Bible is not definitive in that assumption.  It is entirely possible that there was a great span of time between Cain and Abel.  The Bible NEVER states that there were no children born between Cain and Abel.  It simply states, Eve had Cain and later she had Abel.  It does not tell us how much LATER that was.  Maybe it was 400 years later. There is no way to know.

What I do know is that even God acknowledged that there were others around when in verse 15 of Chapter 4 He states, “Not so; if ANYONE kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.  And so the Lord put a mark on Cain so that NO ONE who found him would kill him.”  So logic then leads me to believe if there were no other human beings on the earth at that time, this conversation between God and Cain would not have taken place.  The only people around to kill Cain under that assumption would have been his parents, Adam and Eve.  So that simply cannot be the case.  There were others, and the only way for the others to come into existence would have been thru Adam and Eve and then for those offspring to continue to have offspring.  And hence we have a pool of people from which the wife of Cain would come from. So therefore those facts lead me to believe that the wife of Cain was a relative – maybe a sister or a niece or a cousin.

The other way I can justify my reasoning is if I look into Chapter 5 of Genesis and follow the family line of any of the people listed you can see that the Bible only picks out certain individuals at certain times.  For example, Seth was 105 years old when he became the father of Enoch.  Do you honestly believe that Seth didn’t have ANY children prior to being 105 years old?   The Bible is only listing the person in Seth’s line that would eventually lead to the birth of Christ.  Just as the only two “important” children of Adam and Eve that would make it to the Bible were Cain and Abel even though we know from the Bible that there were other children born to them, because it states they had “other sons and daughters”, but you don’t know anything about them because they were not the focus for the information that God wanted to reveal to us thru His word.

So Cain’s wife is not really a mystery.  The bigger mystery to me is who would have agreed to marry him knowing he was a murderer and had some kind of a “mark” that would designate him as such.

 

 

 

 

Who Ate the Forbidden Fruit?

One of the most talked about occurences in the Bible is when “Eve” ate the forbidden fruit.  Pretty much everyone knows that story.   But the part I find very interesting is that Adam was with her there in the Garden at the tree, and Adam was as big a part of the sin as she was.

As you recall, God made Adam first.  And after creating Adam, God gave a command to him saying, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.”   So isn’t it interesting that here they are, Adam and Eve, in the middle of the Garden, next to the tree that God said to stay away from?  And here is Eve, having a conversation with a serpent.   And here is Adam nearby.  You know Adam was nearby, because the Bible tells us that he was with her.  And here at the tree, is a serpent talking to the woman – that same woman that Adam was supposed to love and protect, and yet Adam does nothing.  It’s not like there was city traffic to drown out the conversation. He heard it.  But Adam never corrects the serpent when he is falsely telling Eve that she would not die, which was completely contrary to what God had told him.  As a matter of fact, Adam does nothing but willingly join her in her sin.

If you look further into the man and his behavior over in Chapter Three verse twelve of Genesis,  we see God in the Garden calling to Adam, not to Eve.  When Adam explains he was hiding because he was naked, God asks Adam a question.  He says, “Have YOU eaten from the tree that I commanded YOU not to eat from?”  Then Adam, still not protecting his wife or taking any kind of responsibility, blames not just Eve, but he blames God.   He says, “The woman YOU put here with me – SHE gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”

See, Adam is given a woman as a suitable helper for him, specifically created by God.  Adam is so happy with the woman he says, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.”  Then God gives Adam a command, “Don’t eat from that tree.” (Paraphrased).  ADAM was the person God directed the command to.  So Adam must have told Eve, because she acknowledges she knew the “rules” when she is having her conversation with the Serpent.  Then God asks ADAM a question, “Have you done what I told you not to?” (Paraphrased), and Adam turns the tables on BOTH God and Eve.  Do you see that?

If I could take liberty with his words, he is, in effect, saying, “Well, partly this is your fault, God.  I mean, after all, YOU are the one who put her here with me.  I really didn’t have a say in the matter.  Then SHE deceived me and gave me some fruit.  You see, I had no idea where she got the fruit from, so I ate it.  So I am not at fault in any way here.”  But Adam did know where she got the fruit.  He knew the entire time.  He was with her.  He did not intervene to stop the sequence of events.  He did not own up to his sin.  He did not obey God.  That is why God punishes Adam.  Because he was no better than Eve.

So the next time someone blames Eve for the fall of humanity, remind them who was supposed to be her protector.  Remind them who was with her.  Remind them that it was both Adam and Eve who disobeyed God.  Adam was not dragged along a road.  He walked down it willingly and knowingly.  It was him and his disobedience along with Eve’s disobedience that led to the fall of humanity that fateful day in the Garden of Eden.

 

 

 

Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh

The creation of Eve calls into question why God chose to make her from Adam’s flesh, when He could just have easily created her in the same manner in which He created Adam – from the dust of the ground. How is it that the creation accounts of Adam and Eve are so very different, yet the Creator is the same?

Looking at the verses in Chapter 2: 18-20, we see that Adam was busy naming the animals that God had caused to come to him after He formed them out of the ground. Did you catch that?  Did you catch that God formed the animals in the same manner in which He formed Adam – from the ground?  And although God formed the animals from the ground, the Bible never tells us that ‘He breathed into their nostrils the breath of life and they became a living being’ , as it does for the Creation of Adam.  So what gave the animals their life?  The Bible doesn’t say.  It simply says they were formed from the ground, and as living creatures, they were brought to Adam for him to name them.  So God could have breathed into them, or He could have caused life to come into them in another way.  We simply don’t know.

But what does it say about Eve? Is the Bible telling us that her creation was somehow inferior since she was not formed in the same unique and creative manner as Adam and the animals?  Far from it.  When a rib was taken from Adam to create Eve, God was using the very DNA from his best creation, His perfect creation of a human, and replicating that in the woman.  Yet, he was doing more than that.  He was showing the woman that without the man, she would not be in existence, and therefore, creating an order for the family.  Just as a woman is very protective of a baby that comes from her womb, I think that by creating woman from man, God was creating something for Adam to care for, love, and protect.  It was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.  Just as an infant is that to the mother and the bond of love in an unbreakable one.

The part of Genesis Chapter two that is most intriguing is in verse 24, when it states “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife…”  Why would this be here in this spot?  There were no fathers and mothers at this point.  In fact, if we believe the Creation account, there were no other beings on the face of the earth except for Adam and Eve.  And while I believe every word in the Bible is inspired from God,  there is also a human element to it.  And here is where I believe that is evident.   For how can it state anything about fathers and mothers, and leaving them to be with a wife? There had been no marriage?  Therefore, there could also be no wife.   There was simply man and there was simply woman.  The terminology of wife and marriage had not yet come.  And to me, the placement of that sentence here makes no logical sense because immediately after the statement, the writer turns his writing back to the creation saying, “the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

Regardless of the reasons why the writer placed that there, this part of the Chapter is dedicated to woman being created to be a suitable helper for man.  And I think it is setting up the “fall” in the Garden of Eden, because as we will see next time, Adam is with Eve in the Garden when she eats of the fruit.  He did not intervene, did not protect her, in fact he joins her, and that is why God also punishes him.  And the animals?  Well they would also have to suffer because of man.